This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

How Yorkdale’s new Nordstrom store is embracing design to woo shoppers

The Nordstrom store at Yorkdale mall opening Friday has a curated art collection – in fact from some angles it looks like a museum – and is designed to light up like a paper lantern at night.

And what does that have to do with selling apparel and accessories?

The Nordstrom store at the Yorkdale mall opens Friday. At nearly 200,000 square feet, the three-storey Nordstrom is the largest tenant in the new 300,000 square foot Yorkdale wing, built from the ground up in a space once occupied by a parking garage. (Nick Kozak)

While design isn’t everything when it comes to sales, increasingly, retailers are investing heavily in what stores look like in order to create buzz, drive traffic and boost their bottom lines.

“We’re fond of saying that sales are the truth,” said Pete Nordstrom, co-president of the Seattle-based retail empire.

“There’s a lot of ways of trying to evaluate our success, but ultimately when you’re talking about a store, if customers like it, it results in more business.”

Article Continued Below

More business is something department stores in Canada need. The sector has declined over the five years to 2016, according to an October report by the market research firm IbisWorld Canada.

A view of the new Nordstrom at Yorkdale from the pedestrian walkway between GO Transit and the TTC Subway station. (Nick Kozak)

IbisWorld forecasts that over the next five years the sector will contract by about 1.1 per cent a year, due to external competition from supercentres and e-commerce sites.

Meanwhile, the department store market is saturated nationally, and lowering prices and offering loyalty programs to attract shoppers has eaten into profit margins.

However, IbisWorld estimates that per capita disposable income will increase at an annualized rate of 0.7 per cent, which will encourage shoppers to splurge on high-end goods, and retailers like Nordstrom, Hudson’s Bay and Saks Fifth Avenue are likely to benefit.

At nearly 200,000 square feet, the three-storey Nordstrom is the largest tenant in the new 300,000 square foot Yorkdale wing, built from the ground up in a space once occupied by a parking garage.

“It took us six months to remove all the dirt – 45,000 truckloads of dirt,” said general manager Claire Santamaria.

The Yorkdale expansion is the largest of its kind in the GTA this year, and numerous mall tenants agreed to expand and renovate as part of the project, which has also attracted new retailers, including the first Canada Goose standalone store and the first Sandro and Maje, from France.

Sculptures at the new Nordstrom at Yorkdale Mall. The Yorkdale expansion is the largest of its kind in the GTA this year, and numerous mall tenants agreed to expand and renovate as part of the project. (Andrew Francis Wallace)

Article Continued Below

Both stores sell fashion and accessories, but in different environments. Sandro offers a more androgynous look, whereas Maje is more distinctly feminine.

“Our number one communication tool is our store,” said Paul Griffin, president and CEO, of SMCP North America. “Visual presentation is absolutely critical to building brand awareness.”

In part because of increasingly small urban living spaces, millennials want to be out and they’re looking for a third place – not home or work – that reflects them personally, said Susan Carter, a Calgary-based principal at Dialog, which works with Canada’s largest mall operators, designing and renovating malls.

“They are very globally focused and part of that is to be out and with other people.”

“We are into an experience economy,” said Alain Giguère from CROP research, which conducts annual surveys measuring, among other things, consumerism levels among Canadians, which are on the rise.

CROP’s latest research found that 58 per cent of Canadians agree that buying is one of the greatest pleasures in life – but they are also interested in experiences.

“That is the challenge or the opportunity for the retail business – to be able to create a unique experience while they are shopping,” said Giguère.

Social media is another force driving retailer interest in design, said Olga Haliuk, interior designer at Dialog in Toronto. Retailers don’t want to show up cast in a bad light on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter because their store looks dumpy or dated.

“Social media is great at spreading good news, but it’s even better at spreading bad news,” said Haliuk, who was part of the team behind the first Shoes.com store in Toronto. “If you have bad design you will hear about it in a heartbeat.”

The Vancouver Nordstrom, built under the direction of architect and designer Dawn Clark, vice-president of store design, has been a huge success for the company, according to Pete Nordstrom.

“We’ve really ushered in a new era of store design over the last two years,” he said.

“We used to really – as everyone did, turn the store into a fortress – there weren’t really windows to the outside, we didn’t really have natural light, it was a much more controlled environment, but I think most people would agree it’s really nice to feel connected to the outside world and to have natural light is just a more pleasant experience and frankly, it really helps with the shopping decisions – you can get a much more accurate read on the way clothes look in real light.”

Clark said the store model has been turned inside-out at the new Nordstrom at Yorkdale: many of the services located at the perimeters of a store – including the elevators, have been set back to allow the store to be wrapped, as much as possible, in glass. A soaring atrium at the centre, with clerestory windows, allows more natural light into the space on all three floor levels.

The VIP area at the new Nordstrom at Yorkdale Mall. (Andrew Francis Wallace)

“There is a lot of psychological research about what happens when you’re in a space that has high ceilings and openness to it, it allows you to be more creative, it allows you to be more explorative,” said Clark.

The chain employs an art curator, who selected the works on display in the store.

Exquisite store design is no assurance of success: Target spent an estimated $10 million renovating each of the Zeller’s stores it took over from Hudson’s Bay Company, only to retreat in defeat a year after landing in Canada.

The final Eatons stores were felled after a lavish renovation of seven big-city locations that included a mystifying ad campaign based on the color aubergine.

Uneven earnings figures from Nordstrom in past months have analysts concerned that after steering clear of the woes afflicting competitors like Macy’s, closing 100 stores in the U.S. this year, Nordstrom’s success no longer seems as assured as it once did.

“Although historically JWN (Nordstrom) was viewed as in an enviable position compared to department store peers. . . deteriorating top-line trends of past few quarters started to put its immunity to secular headwinds into question,” wrote RBC Capital Markets analyst Brian Tunick, in a note to investors in September.

Andrea Hopson and Martha Grace McKimm met when Hopson worked at Tiffany’s and McKimm did public relations for the firm.

“We both gave up big corporate careers, sold both houses, mortgaged our lives to get back to the basics of a business that brought meaningfulness to our lives,” said Hopson.

They decided on luxurious homewares, to inspire people to enjoy celebrations with family and friends.

They carry brands that are hard to find in Canada: Dibbern china from Germany; David Mellor Designs cutlery; Avenida Home, which specializes in whimsical prints; melamine tableware for the cottage crowd, by Mario Luca Giusti; home textiles by Lisa Corti, and wood objets d’art by Jim Lorriman.

“We knew from the get-go we had to take a global point-of-view, because the customer base was well-travelled and well-heeled, a clientele that needed to be awed,” said designer Diego Burdi, of Burdifilek.

They decided on a gallery feel for the space, with a neutral palette, creating effect with texture and Old World touches, including the honeycomb-tiled floor.

They wanted the functionality hidden.

Tables slide out of the display cases to provide an area where customers can try out different place settings, mixing and matching china, glassware and utensils.

There is no cash register in the store. Inventory is in the basement and the machinery of the operation is in a room at the back, where purchases are wrapped and paid for, to maintain a sense of elegance.

“It’s all these subtleties that people don’t understand, but they get it. We want to create a point of memory – they love the space but they don’t know why,” said Burdi.

Store: Mackage

Location: Toronto Eaton Centre

Designer Diego Burdi at retailer Mackage at the Toronto Eaton Centre. He designed the first store in Ontario. (Bernard Weil)

Creating the first outpost in Ontario for Quebec retailer Mackage meant finding a way to make outerwear sexy, said designer Diego Burdi, of Burdifilek.

He started by framing the outside of the store at Toronto Eaton Centre (TEC) in black, to create a focal point.

“I’m framing it in a way that your eye is going right into the store,” said Burdi. “We tried to create a little bit of drama in the store as well.”

The interior of the store is also black, and the coats for sale are lit in a way that is sculptural.

Wood and metal and marble combine to evoke the outdoors, as does the cash desk, shaped to resemble an iceberg.

Behind the cash, an enormous screen displays an image of the snow-capped Canadian Rocky mountains.

“I think that you can’t underestimate how design-aware the general public really is,” said Burdi.

“As a designer you have to up the ante because you can’t fool the public at all.”

Correction – October 24, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled the surname of Paul Griffin, CEO and president of SMCP North America.

More from The Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com